The shot that tears through Kael hasn't even finished echoing before the warehouse explodes into pandemonium.

Gunfire cracks the air like lightning.

Jae. Chuck. Samara. Aires, Matias.

Relief hits her so violently. Her family is here.

Jae, battered but alive, is screaming orders, his bullet flying to disarm the gun pressed to Catalina's temple before swinging towards Cirillo. But the Mirkov leader is faster, howling and already moving. Chuck positions himself in front of Kael, firing shot after shot, his body twisting through the chaos like a wild animal. Samara, in a fucking leather jacket, holds her neon pink gun steady as she kneels in front of Catalina, untying her while keeping her shielded. "All this blood doesn't look fucking flattering on me!" she yells over the roar of gunfire. Aires and the Kincaid men, including Fields, charge at the few Mirkovs, while Matias and the Di Angelos quickly work on the bombs strapped to Frankie's body.

Catalina barely feels the weight of the gun slipping from her fingers as she throws herself toward Kael, but she doesn't make it far.

Another shot fires. Cirillo.

Chuck shoves her down behind a stack of crates just as bullets chew through the space where she stood. "Get down!" he barks.

Catalina's heart is a frantic drumbeat against her ribs. Over the chaos, Catalina sees Cirillo—bloodied, rabid—fighting like a cornered beast, shooting indiscriminately as he tries to escape.

He's outnumbered.

Matias surges forward. He cuts off Cirillo's escape, but he snarls, fires again, and the bullet clips Matias' shoulder. He grunts but doesn't fall.

Samara's already on him. She moves to kick Cirillo's gun from his hand, the crack of bone audible as his grip falters for just a second—but he's quick, far too quick. He lunges at her, his fist slamming into her gut with a brutal thud, knocking the breath from her lungs.

They crash together, a twisted mass of fists and fury. Cirillo's hands wrap around her throat, choking her, eyes blazing with something darker than fury—it's pure, unrelenting rage. He's not letting go.

"You're—" Cirillo growls, his voice a rasping snarl, thick with venom, "—nothing but a fucking whore, you should've died with the Third and rotted with him." His grip tightens, and his lips curl into a savage grin. "I'll put you down like the bitch you are."

Samara's eyes flash, the last of her strength flooding back into her as she manages to break free for a second. Her breath is ragged, but she doesn't let him control her. She spits the words back at him, her voice dripping with defiance: "You think you can scare me?" she hisses, panting. "I've seen scary, fucker, and you don't have his smile."

Before Cirillo can react, Jae's shot rings out, hitting his hand with deadly precision. The weapon drops with a clatter, and Cirillo roars in agony.

He turns on the younger Kincaid, the Fifth, eyes wild with bloodlust, rage bubbling over. But Jae doesn't waste time on words. He's already on top of Cirillo, his fists flying. They slam into each other, bone against bone.

Cirillo howls, thrashing, but Jae's speed is feral—instinct taking over as he claws and slashes at Cirillo, disorienting him. Cerberus doesn't hesitate, using his body like a battering ram, knocking Cirillo against the crates.

The Mirkov leader swings with all his might, his fury unhinged as he tries to bring Jae down, but Jae's movements are sharp, calculated. With one brutal shove, Jae drives his knee into Cirillo's ribs, hearing the sickening crack. As Cirillo stumbles back, gasping, Jae draws a knife from his belt. The metallic hiss of it cutting through the air is the last thing Cirillo hears before Jae slams it into his wrist, the blade sawing through the flesh and bone with brutal efficiency.

Cirillo screams, his hand falling useless to the ground, now nothing but a mangled stump. Blood spreads beneath him.

Jae doesn't even flinch. He leans over Cirillo, pinning him down with his full weight, locking him in place, using every ounce of rage to trap him to the ground. Cirillo struggles, but it's no use.

Samara steps forward, wiping the blood from her lip. She crouches down, meeting Cirillo's wild eyes with a gaze that could freeze the soul. "It's just a little graze," she says sweetly, with a sinister smile. "Don't be such a child."

Cirillo snarls, spitting blood at her feet. "I'm not going to die at your fucking hands, fucking whore." His voice is a low, guttural growl, filled with venom.

Samara's smile is dark, predatory. She leans closer, her voice lowering to a dangerous whisper. "Don't worry—you won't. The Fourth has to play with you first," Samara tells him, an almost amused lilt in her voice. "He'll rip your cock out, break your spine with his bare hands, tear your tongue from your throat just to hear you gurgle. He'll do what you did to us a hundred times worse. You'll pray for death. You'll scream for it. You'll beg for it. And he'll smile while you rot alive."

Catalina sees her eyes burn with icy fury. "Long live the Fourth, asshole."

It's over.

"Secure him! Bomb sweep now!" Chuck shouts, moving fast, reloading his gun without missing a beat.

The Kincaids and the Di Angelos surge forward, disarming the last of Cirillo's men, Chuck leading the charge. Aires grabs Frankie, pulling her behind cover as Matias shouts into a comms unit, calling in their evacuation team.

Catalina barely hears them. She's not watching anymore. She's already running—slipping, almost falling—across the blood-soaked floor.

Kael.

He's sprawled where he fell, blood blooming under him like a dark halo, unnaturally still. She scrambles to him, hands fumbling, frantic.

"Kael," she chokes, dropping to her knees so hard pain shoots up her legs. His blood soaks through her fingers as she presses down on his chest, trying to stem the bleeding. His eyes are half-lidded, face pale beneath the grime and blood.

Catalina's heart splinters all over again.

"No—no, no, no..." Her hands are shaking as she presses down on his wound. Blood wells up, hot and endless, coating her fingers, seeping into her skin. His shirt is soaked through, his breathing shallow, ragged.

Cirillo thrashes against the hold, blood pouring down his mangled arm, his face twisted in a crazed snarl. He locks wild eyes on Catalina as Chuck drags him forward.

There's madness there—pure, feral madness.

"You made him weak," Cirillo hisses, his voice splintered. "This is the end of his reign. The Fourth is nothing but a man bleeding out for a woman who ruined him."

Catalina meets his gaze without flinching, her voice cold enough to sear flesh.

"No," she says quietly. "For a woman who didn't forget who she married."

Cirillo's face contorts into derangement and he jerks against the grip holding him. Chuck only tightens his hold, dragging him away.

Catalina tears at her sleeves to pack against Kael's wound. His skin is too pale. "Stay with me," she begs, voice breaking. "Kael, please—stay with me. Jae! Jae! I need help!"

Her husband's eyelids flutter weakly. He tries—impossibly—to lift his hand, his fingers brushing clumsily against hers.

His mouth moves. No sound comes out.

Fresh tears blur her vision. "Stay with me," she chokes out. "Kael, please—please, I'm sorry—I'm so sorry—"

He's pale, his breathing so thin it barely stirs her hair.

"I love you," Catalina sobs, the words ripping out of her throat raw. "I love you—don't you fucking leave me—"

His bloodied hand lifts—barely—fingertips brushing her cheek.

"Jaan," he rasps. Barely a breath. Barely alive. "Angel..."

Catalina folds over him, forehead pressed to his, her whole body shaking. "I love you," she whispers again and again like a prayer, like an incantation to keep his soul tethered to this world.

Around them, the world is a blur of shouted orders and running boots. Jae crashes down beside her, grim and urgent, a knife in hand to free his brother from his restraints. "The hospital is too far. We need to get him to Samara noona's house."

Samara appears, wild-eyed and bloodied, wiping her own wound with the back of her wrist. "We need to go now. Chuck will follow when he's regrouped with Merlot."

Catalina doesn't even answer—just cups Kael's face in her slick, blood-streaked hands as Jae lifts him carefully. Catalina stumbles after them, blood dripping down her arm.

The car doors fly open. Tires screech. The city—theirs—blurs past in a chaos of lights and sirens and shouting.

Kael's head rests in Catalina's lap, growing heavier and heavier.

She presses both hands to the bleeding wound, whispering nonstop against his forehead. "You're okay. You're okay. Stay with me. Stay, baby. Stay awake, Kael."

He doesn't answer.

When they tear into Samara's building, Jae hauls Kael to the dining table while Samara and Catalina sweep everything off it with frantic hands. The informant and the younger Kincaid immediately scramble for supplies, leaving Catalina to stumble toward the sink, scrubbing the blood from her shaking hands.

Kael's blood runs down the drain, vivid red against steel.

It paralyzes her, even as Samara slams gloves and gauze into her chest.

"You're the only one who can save him," she says fiercely. "Save him, Catalina."

Catalina's breath catches, her hands trembling violently at her sides. Kael is dying—bleeding out in front of her—and she's the only one who can stop it.

This is her nightmare—her greatest fear. Not just losing him, but having to be the one to do something about it. She's never had to save him before, she never wanted to, but she can't be the one to lose him now.

Tears blur her vision, her hands shaking so violently she can barely force them to pick up the gloves Samara shoved into her chest. They slip through her fingers, crumpling in her trembling grasp.

Jae's voice tears through the fog. "Noona. Noona, NOONA!"

His face is pale with terror, but it's the desperate plea in his voice that shatters through her paralysis. "Hyung is dying. Please."

Catalina forces herself to move, dragging the gloves onto her hands. Her breath is ragged, her limbs sluggish and clumsy, but she moves.

Blood is everywhere. Kael's blood. It's the only thing she sees.

"Sterilizer," she gasps.

Jae hands her the alcohol and gauze.

Catalina rips the ruined shirt open first, bile rising at the sight of the ragged, gaping hole in his side. Blood pools beneath him, dark and thick.

But when she moves to brace his body, her gaze catches the gash across his thigh, bleeding freely, soaking into his pants.

Cirillo's shot.

It's not deep enough to be fatal, but messy enough to drain him faster. Another threat. "Jae, his leg—"

"What do I do?" he asks.

"Apply pressure. Now. Rip your shirt, press it hard against the wound, and don't let up until I say. I need to clean and suture it later, but you need to stop the bleeding first."

Jae tears at his clothes without hesitation, balling up the fabric and pressing it firmly against Kael's thigh. His hands tremble, but he holds.

Catalina forces her focus back to Kael's chest, on the blood soaking through his ruined shirt, unable to look at his face.

If she looks at his face, she's going to break.

Catalina rips the fabric open, bile rising at the sight of the ragged, gaping hole in his side. Blood pools beneath him.

Her hands hover above the wound, trembling as she feels for the pulse beneath the flesh. It's weak—too weak—and his breath rattles in his chest, shallow and broken. Her fingers tremble, pressing against the jagged wound, his blood flowing out with frightening ease.

Catalina's voice cracks with barely-contained panic. "Stay with me, Kael," she whispers.

His pulse is faint beneath her fingertips, fluttering like a dying moth.

Oh, God.

Catalina douses the wound in alcohol. The sharp, burning scent makes her eyes water, but she grits her teeth. She presses her fingers into the torn flesh, feeling for the damage beneath.

The bullet tore clean through—but it shredded muscle on the way. It's dangerously close to the lung.

And her hands are inside him.

Inside him.

Catalina has touched Kael a thousand times before—felt the ridges of old scars on his back, the roughness of his calloused hands, the warm line of his throat under her mouth. She's loved him so closely it hurt. She's mapped every inch of his skin with her lips, loved him with a reverence that lived in her hands.

She knows his body by heart, every visible part of him.

But not this. Never inside him.

No matter how deeply and intimately she has loved him, nothing compares to this brutal helplessness—this unbearable act of holding him together in her hands and feeling his life bleeding out between her fingers, of trying to shove it back in.

Catalina wants to scream. She's sobbing so hard she can barely see, choking, but she forces her hands to move, forces herself not to stop. Her stomach heaves. Her chest aches. It shouldn't be her doing this—it shouldn't be anyone who loves him this much, who knows him this intimately, who has kissed every scar on his body.

But she has to fix him. She has no other choice. She has to—

"Fuck!" Catalina screams. "I can't—"

"Noona," Jae snaps.

"Clamps!"

Samara gives it to her, and the sight of her own blood on her arm catches her eye for a second. Shit. She can feel the thick liquid sliding down her wrist, dripping to the floor. "Samara," she orders quietly. "Tie my arm. I can't stop."

Not until the bleeding slows. Not until his breathing, though shallow, holds steady. Not until she's sure her love didn't kill him.

Without question, Samara tears another strip of cloth from Jae's shirt and binds it tightly around Catalina's arm, the fabric biting into her skin. Catalina barely notices. Her gaze never leaves Kael.

His pulse is faint—so faint—and she can hear his breath slowing, his heartbeat weaker by the second. With every stitch, every move, she feels it—his life threadbare under her fingers, pulling further from her reach.

Then Catalina sees something—Kael's skin has taken on an unhealthy pallor, and his breathing is shallow, rattling in his chest. The blood from his wound is still flowing sluggishly, not fast enough, not enough to sustain him.

Catalina's stomach twists. No. No, no, no.

She presses harder. "Come on, Kael," she whispers, tears spilling from her eyes as she continues the suturing, moving faster now, working like a machine. She can't let him go.

Samara's voice snaps her from her daze: "Catalina, you're bleeding—your legs—"

Catalina ignores her. Her hands are moving like they have a mind of their own, but the sight of him—his skin turning cold, his breath shallow, his pulse thready—sends a wave of panic crashing over her.

"Scalpel!" she orders, her voice hoarse.

Samara gives her the tool and she cuts deeper into the wound. The blood hisses, escaping in spurts.

"Samara, I need more gauze," Catalina says, crying. She can't stop crying. She tears open the gauze and presses it against the wound, fighting the blood pouring out faster than she can stop it.

Her heart is a drum in her chest, each beat echoing with fear. She's losing him.

"Please, Kael," she begs through gritted teeth, through the taste of salt on her tongue. "Don't you dare die on me."

The wound is a mess—a brutal, jagged tear—but Catalina's focused on the task at hand. She doesn't stop. She can't. Her heart is raw, a deep, visceral ache that won't go away.

Catalina works with ruthless precision now, moving fast, stitching him up, making sure nothing vital is left open. The skin closes slowly, and her breath comes in shallow bursts, but she can feel him slipping. She has to hurry.

Samara's voice breaks through her focus again, panicked now: "Catalina, your legs—"

"Shut up!" she wails, the sound ripping through her throat. "I have to save him!"

Even Jae is stunned. Pale. Horrified. "Noona..."

Her body is losing strength, but her hands don't stop. She can't afford to stop.

Her fingers are stiff with fear and exhaustion as she cleans the wound, making sure she's not leaving any debris, any infection behind. Her hands are soaked in blood—Kael's blood—and she's shaking so badly she can barely see what she's doing. Tears blur her vision, hot and blinding, spilling down her face unchecked. Her breath comes in broken gasps, her chest heaving, her stomach twisting.

It shouldn't be her. It shouldn't be someone who loves him this much, who knows the shape of his hands, the curve of his back, the sound of his laugh. It shouldn't be someone who has traced every scar and called it beautiful—now holding the parts of him that were never meant to be touched.

The devastation splits her open. A sob claws its way out of her chest, shuddering and ragged, but still—her hands keep moving. She's sobbing openly, ugly and raw, but her hands keep working, precise through pure force of will. Stay with me, she pleads silently. Stay with me, stay with me, please—

Cleaning the wound. Clamping the bleeding. Sewing him back together with the clumsy desperation of someone who cannot lose him. There's nothing professional about it anymore. No calm, no training, no control. Just the brutal, unbearable need for him to live.

And somehow, through sheer stubborn will, through the burning ache in her body and the raw desperation clawing out of her chest—

His heartbeat stabilizes.

His breathing is still faint, still fragile, but steady enough for her to feel it under her palm.

Catalina chokes on a broken cry and drops her forehead against his chest, her knees finally giving out beneath her. She clutches at him with bloodstained hands, the weight of everything crashing down at once, and she weeps like her heart has been ripped out.

*

#ReignTheFourthWP